Looking over the large ingredients list for a loose tea (Keemun and Ceylon tea, cinnamon, ginger, fennel, cocoa nibs, cardamom seeds, roasted carob, Indian sarsparilla root, natural and artificial flavors), it seemed a little disjointed. I wasn't sure this was going to work. I'll assure that it does, very nicely.

It smells like a chai. It tastes like a vanilla black tea with some warming chai ingredients tossed in. It's natively sweet and creamy, a worldly blend of ingredients native to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. And it's alluring for any aficionado of spiced teas. The dry smell more resembled the flavor than the in-cup aroma, strangely, but since it was all good, that didn't bother me. Dry, it carries noticeable vanilla, then again in the decidedly smooth and creamy taste, which nonetheless has a bit of a spicy edge from the cinnamon and ginger. When some cocoa nibs fall into a strainer dose, it's a background hint at best until the aftertaste, which gets decidedly more chocolatey.

All in all, it's a bit of a flavor party, as if someone swirled a bit of chocolate into vanilla icing and applied that to a spice cake. I hope that doesn't sound offputting, because this is a really delicious, dessert-like tea. My only complaint, which is minor, is that one can get some noticeable inconsistency from one cup to the next, due to differences in how much of each ingredient falls into the strainer. For example, one cup might miss the cinnamon pieces altogether, or the next lacks cocoa nibs, or the next didn't catch a piece of sarsaparilla. But enough other components remain, that play well together, to keep it tasty regardless. I'm not much of a blender of milk and tea, but this seems like an ideal candidate for those who like doing so.

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